In colonial America, the style of Puritan writers is almost the same as the spiritual biography of St. Augustine. Its content is basically based on many references to the Bible. Mary White Rowlandson's captivity narrative constitutes the best example of a typical Puritan narrative. Many scholars usually read this autobiography from a historicist perspective to analyze the socio-historical context of this narrative which portrays the large Puritan community, culture and barbarism of the natives. However, I prefer to study this work with a neo-historicist approach to underline and understand the contained messages that the writer wants us readers to decipher. Because literature is not mobile, and reading it “from a universal point of view is a fantasy”, as Stephen Greenblatt, the coiner of the term “New Historicism”, states. In the first part of this article I will try to analyze the tip of the iceberg of this novel. Then I will deal with what is at the bottom, that is, the subtext. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Being the wife of a minister, Rowlandson's first goal is to provide a series of spiritual lessons for the Puritan community. As we can see in the first title of her story, Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together with the Faithfulness of His Manifested Promises, the narrator focuses in her story on describing God's providence and his ultimate power more than anything else. In this way, she tries to convince readers that all the horrible things that happened to her during her imprisonment are destined to happen. For her, God shows his goodness and mercy in every situation. The Puritan woman is reflected as a heroine sent by her Lord to teach the entire community about his goodness and sovereignty. The preface to this captivity narrative is written primarily by a priest, believed to be Cotton Mather. This priest shows his great respect for Rowlandson's husband and invites readers to believe in the truthful events that the narrator tells them. Then, he tells them that this autobiography was written by Rowlandson herself to serve religious purposes. Mary Rowlandson begins her narrative with a detailed description of the terrifying Indian attack on Lancaster. Many Puritans are horribly killed and burned. Then he states that "several houses were burning and the smoke rose to the sky"; as if Rowlandson is telling his readers that these sinless Puritans will go straight to heaven without any doubt. When the natives were about to reach the minister's house, Rowlandson could not escape. So the only solution for her was to take her children and pray to God to save her; declaring that: "With this the Lord will make us recognize his hand more and see that our help is always in him"; Once the “ravenous beasts” arrive at her home, they kill most of her family and injure her and her youngest daughter; Above all, Rowlandson depicts in this passage his sister's desperation when she sees her children dead, and the fact that God answers her prayer to end her pain and let her die with them; For this reason, the narrator hopes that he will “reap the fruits of his good labors, being faithful to serve God in his stead.” He quotes the biblical scripture that says, “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee.” Furthermore, she directly adds that “more than twenty years later, I heard her tell how sweet and comfortable that place was for her”. In light of this, Mary Rowlandson tries through these lines to convince readers that if they are faithful enough to God like her brother,heaven is accessible to them. In the next paragraph the prisoner asks her readers to take a look at God's providence that instantly disrupts their happy life. In the beginning of the narrative, Rowlandson says that he would rather die than go with such heartless pagans; However, he quickly changes his mind; The Puritan woman compares herself to Job who says, “And I ran away only to tell the news” to tell readers that God preserves his life because he wants to tell his story as Job had done before. In First Remove, Mary Rowlandson portrays the brutality and barbarity of the Indians. They celebrated their victory after casually killing and kidnapping the settlers. He wants to demonstrate that unlike Christians, “pagans” are heartless and ruthless. In Second Remove, Rowlandson depicts her daughter's anguish and how she, as a mother, finds comfort only through her faithfulness. He states that: “[…] But the Lord has renewed my strength again and supports me so that I can see his power more; yes, so much that I could never have thought of, if I had experienced it.” When I began reading Rowlandson's short story, I understood Greenblat's emphasis on the importance of literature in portraying history. To me, this narrative makes no sense without studying its context. For this reason, the details that Rowlandson provides in his work take us on a journey into the past. Through his narrative, we can learn many things about King Philip's Indian War. The story also gives us an important description of Indian society and the beliefs and experiences of the Puritans in early America. In Third Remove, we understand that Mary Rowlandson tells her readers that even though she fails to complete her duties to God, He is still helping and guiding Her. She says the Christian prisoner of Roxbury gives her oak leaves to heal her wounds. This plant, in fact, has a very profound meaning in the Puritan community. First of all it has a religious value. It symbolizes Abraham's incredible faith, tolerance and strength. Secondly, the oak symbolizes the vigor and power of England. Third, it is a key plant in the colonial settlement trade; specifically, Roxbury. Consequently, Rowlandson wants us to understand through this symbol that the Lord is the one who sends the chosen Christian to heal his wounds and revive his strength. Furthermore, she emphasizes the might of her country, which means that the English army will definitely save her from the “heathens”. Mary Rowlandson later informs her readers that her daughter Sarah died in very miserable circumstances. However, he does not describe his pain in detail. Instead, thank the Supreme God for his goodness. Later, he declares that he wants to see his son and daughter, Mary and Joseph, again after losing his beloved young daughter. This irony shows Rowlandson's anxiety about mourning. This anxiety is also shown in the sixth passage, when Rowlandson mentions the temptation of Lot's wife. He writes, “That day I went weeping and lamenting, leaving my county and traveling through a vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of the temptation of Lot's wife, when she looked back.” through these lines we understand that Rowlandson is referring to the outcomes of mourning. He makes it clear that because of Lot's wife's mourning for his people, she disobeyed God by going back and seeing what was happening to them. Rowlandson puts herself in the shoes of Lot's wife here because the Lord judges her the same way. On the one hand she has her dead daughter behind her, on the other her duty calls her to accept God's plans for her. As a Puritan woman, Mary Rowlandson is not free to reveal her melancholy because Puritans have always regarded mourning as a quibbleon the sovereignty and power of God. Death in Puritan society is considered "the absolute master". Therefore the Puritan writers do not directly speak of this antagonism towards pain, but show it in some way. Even though mourning is forbidden in Puritan society, the minister's wife manages to hide her grief, above all, in the Third Remove. Mary White Rowlandson tries to focus more on reason. Yet, he finds himself emotionally telling his story. Although Rowlandson is perhaps unconsciously expressing his grief, this failure could also be interpreted as some sort of challenge to the Puritans' beliefs. In the last part of Third Remove, Rowlandson thanks God for sending an Indian to give her a Bible. When he begins to read chapter 28 of Deuteronomy, all negative thoughts go away; especially when he reads the first seven verses of the 30th chapter. He states that he understood that “mercy was promised to us again, if we would return to him through repentance; and even if we were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, the Lord would gather us together and turn all those curses on our enemies” . The minister's wife tries to convince herself and her readers that only by returning to God will all their wishes come true. Thus, he provides a very cunning example of the Puritan prisoner, the good wife Joslin, who could not bear her imprisonment. Rowlandson tries to convince Mrs. Joslin not to run away by reading with her Psalm 27 which says: 'Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He will strengthen your heart, wait, I say to the Lord.' However, the impatient white woman can't take it anymore. As a result, the good wife Joslin tells her captors to release her. So, “they gathered a large company around her and stripped her naked, and placed her among them, and after singing and dancing around her (in their devilish way) as long as they pleased, they dashed her to the ground. head, and with her the child in her arms. Once this was done they lit the fire and put both of them in it." Through this scene, Rowlandson tries to make it clear that only God can help his people, and that those who doubt his sovereignty would likely face the same fate as Joslin. In Fifth Remove, Rowlandson also shows her great faith when the English army fails to get her husband's back. She writes that it is not the English who have failed, but God has not yet decided to free her. In the following Remove Mary Rowlandson quotes many scriptures from the book of Psalm. The narrator and the majority of Puritans believe in the stories and the set of principles covered in the Psalms because they consider themselves God's chosen people. The real reasons for this intertextuality between Rowlandson's story and the book of Psalms are various. First, the narrator sees herself as the Puritan heroine who experiences not only the same paths as the Old Testament prophets, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, and Micah, but also the psalmist David. She glorifies herself through this textuality, and similarly finds hope through the Psalms. The minister's wife wants to demonstrate that she is a chosen woman, as Cotton Mather makes clear in the introduction. Second, Rowlandson quotes verses from the Old Testament and Psalms to elevate his style and make his narrative more appealing. Above all, Rowlandson finds a thoughtful way to express his true emotions and feelings through the Book of Psalm. Dawn Henwood writes in this context that she “often turns to this early book of the New England Puritans for reliance on her angst.” Therefore, we understand that the Psalms are Rowlandson's voice to express his anger, grief, and sorrow in an indirect way. This Puritan prisoner spends most of her lifepart of the time reading it as it is the only thing that gives her hope and determination. After reading Mary Rowlandson's work, I conclude that her narrative is a product of her status and society. The minister's wife is obligated to write and publish her account according to Puritan beliefs and standards. In the very first chapters, Rowlandson describes the Indians as monsters, as she puts it, "and they saw nothing but wilderness, woods, and a company of pagan barbarians." Then, he writes in Sixth Remove, that "there was a great difference between the lovely faces of the Christians and the disgusting looks of those pagans, which again dampened my spirits." (21). Paradoxically she tells how good they are to her. The contradiction is for me a clear hypocrisy of this narrative. For me, Rowlandson's main goal is to portray the indigenous inhabitants of America in the worst way possible. He wants to show the whole world that unlike the Puritans who are highly civilized and humane, the Indians are pagans and beasts. The Puritan writer is telling a big lie in her story to mislead people's view. Rowlandson's interpretation of the Old Testament is a representation of the beliefs of the Puritans. she does her best to glorify herself and white Christians by portraying her captors as savage and inhumane. Whenever we read Mrs. Mary Rowlandson's Captivity and Restoration, we find confusion. On the one hand, the narrator reflects badly on his captors; on the other hand we understand from her story that most of them are extremely kind to her. We can also see Rowlandson's hypocrisy in the Eighteenth Remove when he steals the Christian child's food. Being a puritanical prisoner, she always criticized her captors for not sharing food with her. However, once she starves, she becomes a pagan Indian. Rowlandson tells his readers about this incident without any guilt. In the early chapters, Mary White expresses her anger at the “heathens” who kill her daughter without remorse. However, when an Indian child dies, she shows satisfaction and joy as she says: "My mistress's papoose (baby) was sick, and he died that night, and there was an advantage in that: that there was more room" . Additionally, Puritans believe that women are cursed by their bodies and beauty. Rowlandson insists in her narrative on proving to her readers that she is still pure. She says that God helps her preserve her chastity and purity in the desert. However, the strange relationship of the captive woman with her Indian master raises many questions in the minds of the readers. Rowlandson expresses in Twentieth Remove her happiness when her drunken master invites her to come to him. He says: “Then he called me. I trembled when I heard it, and yet I wanted to go to him, and he drank for me. . In another scene of the Nineteenth Remove, Rowlandson states that, “After many toilsome steps we came to Wachusett, where he [his master] was: and I was glad to see him. He asked me, when did I wash? I told him no this month. Then he himself went to get me some water, ordered me to wash and gave me the glass to see how I was." As a result, we can clearly see that Rowlandson's teacher is not just her friend as she claims. He is much more than that. Also, I think Rowlandson's lover's jealousy definitely has its reasons. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Simply put, Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God along with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed is one of the earliest narratives in American literature. This work reflects Puritan beliefs and the Indian community in detail. From the analysis it is clear that.